Hello all... I was amusedly following the "Satan" thread when I came across the fragment, "...error of perception..." A provocative jumble of words, to say the least. This post is not made to belittle the author but to explore the legitimacy of the statement. For me, it's a hell of a can o' worms to open. It suggests there is only one correct, uniform or objective perception for any given encountered phenomenon. Is this statement the epitome of arrogance or have I not examined my perceptions deep enough to come to this "truth"? -apropos, no?

YOUR perception will be based upon YOUR individual knowledge base. The only correct perception is from the one supplying the item to percieve. This itself is biased on the originators overall perception of what they are supplying.It's a mysterious thing trying to assess the truth. If you know the supplier well enough you can relate to what they were proposing. In the NP telepathy gets past this problem instantly. In the physical its almost a guessing game.

Logged

There's far more where the eye can't see.Close your eyes and open your mind.

the problem might be that we have a vicious logical circle going here when your perception is already influenced to some degree (or fully) by former or current interpretations/conclusions/personal-truths

Well... I guess it depends on context, like a lot of things. There are contexts where it makes sense to talk about objective reality, and contexts where it doesn't.

For instance, setting aside the fact that we have no purchase on what the nature of this reality we are experiencing is exactly, it generally appears to be internally consistent, at least on macro, sub-luminal-speed scales. For instance, 20 people are in a room, they agree between them that there are 10 oranges on the table. Let's put aside some of them being mentally ill, or under the influence of an evil sorcerer, or such things. I understand there are a host of caveats you can use to whittle away the substance of the claim that there are 10 oranges there... but such claims do have substance.

We have built a baroque edifice of science on the substance that the claim that there are 10 oranges can have useful meaning. A science which produces results that are dazzling beyond compare. We are all talking to one another with the assistance of devices which store billions of binary objective claims. If even one of those claims was erroneous in some cases, the entire system could fail.

The fruits of technology we have are pretty obvious proof that objective claims have useful merit in some contexts.

So what if the 21st person walks in, and says that there are not in fact 10 oranges, but 10 million, and that every other person in the room is in fact a jaguar? Well... I'd say that their perception was real, in the sense that all experiences are real, but also that in some sense, yes, they are guilty of an error of perception. They failed to perceive correctly the objective system. I don't care for the moment that the objective system could be an illusion fed to us in the form of individual subjective experiences... we often agree on the states of this system, and the fact that we are able to accomplish so much by at least treating the system as though it were objective tells us that that approach has at least temporary value.

"...at least treating the system as though it were objective tells us that that approach has at least temporary value." Yes. This becomes a framework, made up of root assumptions. I believe I have heard it referred to as consensus reality. For the sake of continuity, we all agree to a baseline-the physical "laws" for instance. Surely, this provides a more stable experience than say, your house suddenly floating away into the clouds or you unexpectedly accelerating exponentially as you start to walk... From this, individual perception adds infinite shadings to the equation and what you perceive is your business...